


Goddammit, Life Is Wonderful

by orphan_account



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wedding!fic in the Max verse</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goddammit, Life Is Wonderful

**Title:** Goddammit, Life is Wonderful  
 **Author:** alphabet_magic  
 **Rating:** M  
 **Disclaimer:** All characters and situations other than my own belong to CowLip, not me.

Wedding!fic! Max!fic (sort of)! Told in Justin's POV, which is different for me as I usually write in 3rd person. I dunno, I had tons of fun with this. Hope you like it.

I'll probably write the honeymoon in the future. Maybe.

Thanks for your patience. I'm slow, I know.

Oh, and this is a kinda-sorta sequel to [this](http://alphabetfic.livejournal.com/2236.html#cutid1), so you can read it first if you want. Not required, though.

 

I don’t really know how to tell him.

I mean, he’s just three and a half, he’s only spent a handful of nights away from Brian and me in his entire life (none of which he can probably remember), and really, how’re you supposed to tell a kid, who believes his parents’ sole purpose in life is to be with him, that said parents are going away to Spain for a week-long-honeymoon-fuckfest? Beaches and buttsex, getting drunk and not giving a shit, probably smoking pot on some balcony, naked, with the summer breeze blowing as they blow each other. Bine and Daddy spending seven days getting thoroughly debauched while Max spends days and days crying into his dinosaur pillowcase.

Yeah, I’m being really fucking overdramatic and yeah, I’m willing to admit that Brian and I need, need, _need_ some time alone to fuck, and yeah, I’m probably just going to tell Max that we’re only going to Spain to buy him the most super-awesome toy on the planet as a prize for being such a cool kid…but that doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s sitting on the living room floor, eating blueberries and watching some kiddie show…and goddammit, he’s really fucking cute.

I’m not too humble to say that my son’s basically perfect looking when it comes to toddlers. He doesn’t look all that much like me except for his eyes and, well, his height (or lack thereof), but as weird as it is, he kind of looks like Brian in some strangely coincidental way. So he’s pretty much beautiful, and he’s got purple fingers from squished blueberries and he’s talking back to the CG unicorn on TV that’s asking him which one of the butterflies is green, and…I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.

I’ve always loved kids, but it’s like when you actually have one…when you help cook up this thing and his blood and DNA and stuff’s all yours, and when you’ve changed his diapers and wiped his snot and spent three years making sure he’s healthy and safe and happy…nothing else compares. I used to keep Gus a lot when he was a baby, and I always babysat Daph’s kids, but I mean, Max is completely different. It’s this whole new level of love that I’ve never before experienced and one that I can’t quite label. But I guess to describe it, it’s…the fact that sometimes watching your three-year-old son eat blueberries can make you want to call off a vacation that you desperately need just so you don’t have to leave him.

I stand there and watch him for a bit longer, until there’s a commercial break and he sets down his bowl and flops over onto his monkey pillow pet. I don’t think he knows I’m there…he’s just lying on his back, chewing on the monkey tail and rubbing his eyes because he’s sleepy. So I go over to him and say his name…scoop him up and carry him over to the couch because, honestly, three’s really not too big to be held like this.

“Wendy the Woonicon says baby butt-ull-fwies is cat-ull-pills,” Max says against my neck.

“Well that’s cool, Max,” I tell him, shifting him, cradling him so his head’s in the crook of my arm and his little pajama’d body’s across my lap. “What else does she say?”

Max makes some weird little twinkly unicorn noise and giggles as I tickle him then kiss his upper lip, ‘cause you know, goddammit-can’t-help-it.

“So what happens in two days?” I finally ask, holding up two fingers and wiggling them in his face.

“Daddy and Bine gets mellweed.”

“Daddy and Brian are getting married.” I smooth back his hair. “And what happens after that? Do you know?”

“We has a pah-ty!”

Yeah, we taught him well.

I smile. “After the party?”

“Daddy and Bine gets little babies!”

I pause and raise an eyebrow. “Really, now?”

“My dinos gets mellweed and gots little babies!”

“So you think Daddy and Brian are going to have babies?”

Max kicks his legs…laughs loudly with this huge expression of some kind of insane happiness on his face. I tickle him some more.

“I don’t think so, Monster,” I say, before leaning down to blow a raspberry on his neck. “Not unless Brian wants to get pregnant.”

Max has no idea what that means, but he still laughs hysterically, reaching up to playfully pull my hair like he does when he’s on the verge of getting hyper…that kind of hyper where he thinks it’s funny to blow spit bubbles and ends up with a wet chin and a shirt smelling like slobber.

“So listen, listen, listen,” I whisper, shushing him, rocking him, trying to get him calmed down. “When two people get married, sometimes they go on this trip called a honeymoon.”

Max rubs his nose with his fist.

“It lasts for a few days, and it’s where the two people go off and spend some time together by themselves.” I think about elaborating, being all educational and shit like parents are supposed to be, telling him how it’s important for daddies to spend time together in private, but I’m not going to lie. Brian and I spend time together all the time. The honeymoon is purely for carnal purposes. So I change course and instead tell Max about how Brian and I are going to go buy him this ages six and up robotic dinosaur thing he’s been wanting since it began advertising on Nickelodeon, and since he’s only three, we have to go to another country to get it. He gets really excited to the point that the part about him having to stay with Nana for a whole week doesn’t faze him, even though I know it will when it’s bedtime the night after Brian and I leave and Mom’s trying to get Max to sleep in the guest bedroom. It’ll faze him big time, just like it’s fazing me now.

I pull him up against my chest, squeeze him tight, kiss his ear, and fuckity-fuck why do I have to feel like this? I’m a sap. A girly sap.

I tell Brian as much while he’s blowing me later on, and it’s really unfortunate that I do because it’s this super-amazing blowjob where he’s holding my hips, sucking slowly on the head of my cock, my legs wrapped around his neck, and…just…God.

Brian pulls back and sighs loudly, “Duh,” then begins kissing his way up my abdomen. Cock is neglected. Shit.

“Wrong answer,” I say.

“Well.” Brian shrugs…wiggles free of my legs. He crawls up my body and we start to make out like ferocious animals, and okay, so the aborted blowjob ends up being just fine because Brian then proceeds to finger-fuck me until I’m on the edge of death and then replaces his fingers with his cock.

~*~

I’m really fucking tired the next day, which is bad because it’s kind of a big one. Day before the wedding. Day of our stag party that lasts approximately eleven hours and involves homos in g-strings, Emmett and Michael singing “Islands in the Stream,” Brian pretending he’s incredibly bored because, due to the fact that we’ve got a three-year-old to go home to, getting piss-drunk and high as kites aren’t the greatest of ideas.

The women are supposed to be taking care of all the last minute wedding things, and Brian and I are simply supposed to be enjoying ourselves, but it’s all just…dumb. We’re too old for stag parties, I’d frankly rather be riding Brian’s cock and then passing out for a handful of hours, and I feel like we’ve been doing pre-wedding, pre-wedding, pre-wedding shit for the past fifteen years…since our first attempt at tying the knot…and now it’s just kind of like, why not go to the courthouse? Why not sign papers, make it legal, fuck in the bathroom, and be done with it?

After twenty years of being together, getting officially married to Brian is preferable. It’s smart. It’s what we _should_ do in order to protect ourselves, to protect Max, to protect our home. And I whole-heartedly believe that _that’s_ what Brian was asking me to do that night in bed. Do you want to get _officially_ married? Not have an extravagant wedding ceremony in which our son wears a tiny tux in order to carry rings down a carpeted aisle, and in which we say, “I do” in front of a group of people who are blubbering all over each other with tears.

But, see, Brian gets these…ideas. He gets these things in his head where _everything_ has to be the biggest, has to be the best (It all goes back to the cock thing. I swear to God he’s no bigger than seven and a half, maybe, but oh, anyone mentions it and he’s nine big, thick, beautiful inches. It’s this…thing with him. He can’t help it…I know he can’t.). So what likely started off as a desire for a casual paper-signing ended up turning into a full-blown _event_ once people started talking about it and hyping it up. What likely started off as me, Brian, and Max, maybe Mom, Deb, and Gus, turned into all of us plus everybody we know, sort of know, fucked at one time, and this fucking band Brian hired to play the reception. Oh, and it turned into a castle. Desmarais or something French like that. Our wedding is going to be in a fucking _castle_ (okay, a very big house, but it looks like a castle so whatever), and our wedding night is going to be spent in the master suite there, while Molly babysits Max in the guest quarters.

It’s all very, very ridiculous. It makes me exhausted.

I end up falling asleep all over Brian on the limo ride home after the stag party. I don’t mean to, but at some point I just lean my head on him like I always do, and three seconds later I’m blinking awake as the vehicle’s entering our driveway.

Back at the house, we find Debbie asleep on the couch with Max cuddled all around her. He’s clean and in pajamas and he’s probably stuffed with enough Italian food to keep him full for a week.

Deb’s so great with Max, and he adores her, but she’s getting older and isn’t aging so well, especially after her stroke, so babysitting-time’s usually kept to a minimum. For her sake. Max is a handful.

“Shit,” Debbie says, stretching awake. She disentangles herself from the little pile of boy next to her and climbs from the couch. Shakily. God, she’s seventy. How the fuck’d she get seventy? And Mom’s in her mid sixties, and Brian’s…still gorgeous.

I laugh in my head as I look at him. Brian’s almost fifty. But, you know, fuck, because I’m thirty-seven. Holy shit.

Debbie gives us copious amounts of hugs and kisses, squeezing the life out of me, almost, and tells us to get some rest.

“Big day tomorrow, boys,” she says, patting Brian’s cheek fondly. Her nails are bright and red and so is her lipstick. She’s never lost her flame. Her fire. “Don’t stay up all night fucking.”

She’s laughing as she leaves, and I laugh, too. I feel drunk or something. Stupid. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that Brian and I are getting married the next day. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re old as hell, horny as hell. Maybe it’s the fact that Brian’s got this “yeah fucking right” look on his face and he looks like Max, which is weird because he technically shouldn’t. It’s the lips or something. Wide, pretty lips and a strong jaw.

I kiss Brian hard, wind my arms around his waist and squeeze. He kisses back, then skims his mouth from my lips, up my face to my forehead. Back down again.

“It’s your last night as a free man,” he whispers…kisses.

I take a step back. Raise my eyebrow. “One might say the same to you.”

Brian does this tongue-in-cheek thing, you know the one, with a quirk of a smile, gleam of the eye. Slowly shakes his head.

I smile. “No?”

“Since meeting you, when the fuck have I been free?” He breathes through a laugh. It’s quiet, like he doesn’t want the walls to hear him, and…I love him when he admits shit.

“Good point,” I say, leaving it at that.

~*~

Brian carries Max to bed, tucks him in and kisses his face. I’ll never get tired of it. Never get tired of the fact that Brian’s so gentle with him, so patient, so loving. He told me once, one night when it was simply us and a bottle of booze and the dark, that he “just fucking [loves] that kid.” I think it was a couple months after Max was born, after that period when I wondered and Brian probably wondered what that love was going to be like. And I know it’s true, just from watching. Just from watching Brian cuddle Max so naturally, talk to him, hold his hand, wash his face when it’s dirty…

He’s Max’s dad. As much as I am, even.

~*~

Brian wraps his arms around me outside Max’s door, and for the longest time, we just stand there in the dark hallway, partially leaned against the wall, eyes closed…hugging. Half-asleep, sort of, my forehead against Brian’s throat, his palms resting against my lower back. I hear him breathe, and it’s low and quiet and human, and I wonder if he’s listening to me breathe, swallow, sniff. He squeezes me tighter. Yeah.

We’re tired, so tired, from a week of plans, parties, rehearsals, conversations, gratuitous fucking (Yes, I said it, if only because, in retrospect, that ten-minute fuck against the wall that morning seems like just another pound of exhaustion when you’ve only slept four hours in two days). Our little standing state of limbo works for probably five full minutes, until Brian snaps out of it, pulls away, and starts leading me to the bedroom.

Thank fuck we don’t do anything but strip and collapse, but thinking back on it the next morning, it does kind of suck that we didn’t get in just one more round of premarital sex before the big moment. Our “night before” ends up being a little anticlimactic, literally.

It gets us out of bed at eight, though, and allows us to bathe, dress, and feed a three-year-old while fumbling around with ourselves and the fucking Gucci-Prada-Whatever attire Brian picked out for us to wear before we change into tuxes.

Max is just so happy. So happy about getting to carry rings down a red carpet. He’s literally bouncing off the walls as Brian and I are loading our shit into the Bentley, and Brian ends up having to throw him over his shoulder to carry him to the car, leaving Max giggling like a crazy little animal with his legs kicking in the air.

“This is really fucking ridiculous,” I say, and I don’t know why. We’re all piled into the car with a bunch of suitcases and bags full of hair mousse and shit, and Brian’s playing the radio to distract Max, who’s about to start blowing spit bubbles even though it’s barely ten in the morning, and my cell phone’s ringing, and I’m…just…fuck.

Brian slumps back against the driver’s seat, adjusts the rearview mirror, and then gives me this long look of…something. His eyes are this deep brown with flecks of green, and he has these crinkles at the corners of his eyes that almost make him look younger for some reason, like a too-happy-Max-kid who’s always laughing.

The look isn’t romantic, isn’t one of “I love you,” but it’s intense all the same.

He leans in and kisses me right on the mouth. Hard. A stop-fucking-thinking kiss filled with…everything.

Max stops laughing. He’s watching, which is amusing, and you know what? Whatever. I fill the silence, turning a hard-kiss into a laugh-kiss and then Brian and I are kissing like a couple of teenagers who are drunk and sneaking around in the dark. God. I don’t know what it is. I grab the sides of Brian’s face and pull him closer.

~*~

It’s kind of ironic, but we live in the country. Not in the ridiculous country manor Brian bought years and years ago, but in an appropriately large, new, and expensive two-story house that sits on fifteen acres of land. We’re far, far away from anyone who could bother the fuck out of us (neighbors), no one can even make it all the way up our driveway without a passcode for the gate (which every member of our extended family knows, kind of defeating the purpose), so basically we live in a compound like members of a cult. But that’s really not the point. The point is that we’re a good half-hour away from the heart of Pittsburgh, which is a good half-hour away from the castle in which Brian and I are getting married, so discounting awful traffic, the trip to Desmarais should take about an hour.

Twenty minutes in, Max is watching one of the Monsters Inc. films, I’m sitting in the passenger seat very, very quietly, and Brian is gripping the steering wheel like a vise. I don’t really want to think too much about what we’re doing, I guess taking Brian’s kiss-advice, but it’s all just so fucking stupid-weird and…

“Stop,” Brian says, turning left onto a new road. “I can’t concentrate.”

“What?”

“Stop thinking.”

“Sorry.”

~*~

Thirty minutes in, Max has to pee. _Has got to_ pee. You see, the thing with kids is that when they tell you they’ve got to go, what they really mean is that they’ve been holding it for the past hour and they’re just now at the point where they’re about to need a change of pants. Even back at the house when you pulled down their pants, stood them on their stool in front of the toilet and said, “Okay, let’s try…try to pee,” they had to go. They just didn’t because they’re kids and kids don’t go when they only kinda-sorta need to.

“Pee-pee, Daddy!” Max calls, holding himself.

Brian pulls over on the side of the road, right into about an acre of field somewhere west of Pittsburgh, and I climb out to do the side-of-the-road-pissing-duty, which consists of completely removing Max’s pants, underwear, and shoes because he’ll, without a doubt, inadvertently pee on himself, helping him do his business (which he finds endless joy in doing outside), and then redressing him while stepping all in the grass he’s just peed on.

~*~

We finally make it to Desmarais at a few minutes past eleven. Emmett and the women are already there, as are caterers, the band, Cynthia, and a bunch of designers and florists, running around like mice, touching _everything_ , basically flipping out while Brian and I stand there in the center of the “great room,” thinking. Or I’m thinking, at least. Brian’s likely desperately trying to find something wrong with the décor.

The wedding begins at one, and the room’s prepared for an attendance of around a hundred people. That’s not a huge amount for a typical wedding, sure, but when you think about the fact that Brian and I only have about fifteen actual friends and non-estranged family members between us, that more or less puts everything to scale. The other eighty-five people are random Kinnetik staff members, my assistants, business people basically owned by Brian, Max’s two babysitters, old Babylon staff, and Todd. Todd’s invited to everything.

Daphne comes in with her nine or so kids (four, but four kids under the age of eight feels like nine), and I go off to sit with her and simultaneously watch Kai and Jet, the six-year-old twins, make Max cry. Kids are such assholes, especially Daph’s (though I don’t often tell her that), but Max needs to learn to stick up for himself, so I don’t interfere with the little, “You’re a stupid _baaaaby_!” comments. I just think, “Punch ‘em, Max! Knock out their teeth!”

We talk about the honeymoon, basically, and Daphne apologizes ninety times for not being able to keep Max.

“It’s just that my shifts suck,” she says, juggling little Faye, who’s trying her hardest to get to Daphne’s tit through her dress.

That just makes me depressed, because goddammit, my kid, who’ll soon be neglected by his parents, is currently being verbally abused by little bitches. I tell Daphne that it’s okay, don’t worry about it, I understand, thank you so fucking much for coming you have no idea what this means to me, and go rescue the love of my life (yeah, I know) from impending danger.

~*~

“Did you _see_ the fucking flowers?” Brian asks, and yes, he’s gay, thanks for asking. He’s also half-naked and sweating because he’s nervous or pissed off, probably the latter, taking his shirt off the hanger and beginning the careful process of putting it on so it doesn’t wrinkle in any way, shape, or form. We’re in the master suite, getting dressed. The band’s practicing downstairs. Molly and Mom are next door, dressing Max, and I can hear Max jabbering on excitedly about the ages six and up robotic dinosaur.

I guess I should answer Brian. “Yeah.”

“Well?”

I shrug. “They’re…”

“Not what we fucking asked for. Didn’t you want golden gardenias?”

“Fifteen years ago.”

Brian pinches the bridge of his nose because he’s about to tell me I’m wrong, even though I’m not…that last month I specifically told him I wanted golden gardenias.

"You specifically told me you wanted golden gardenias.”

I stare at him. “Fifteen years ago.”

Brian shrugs…begins buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. “Well, the gardenias here are white.”

We finish getting dressed in silence. Brian looks really fucking hot in his tux. It’s black and his tie’s silver, and he looks slim and tall and just…like Brian. I lean my head against his chest and stare at us in the mirror.

“We look fancy,” I say, getting my arms around his waist. Holding on.

“We look hot.”

I smile slightly.

He’s looking at me all seriously, relaxing against my body…something’s in his eyes.

“I hate this,” I say, admitting what I think he’s trying to.

He snorts. “I don’t believe it.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Never.” He squeezes me against him…leans down and kisses my ear. Smiles.

I do, too. “Max is excited, at least.”

“Max is excited about everything.”

He is. He really, really is. We’re trying to teach him to start at least _attempting_ to wipe himself, and you should’ve seen his face when we gave him his very own Kandoo wipe.

“Mm.” Brian turns me in his arms and places his hands on my shoulders. Gently squeezes. “It’s not about all this, you know,” he says quietly, making a motion with his head. “All this shit.”

Flowers. Tuxes. The words, “I do.”

“I know that,” I say, because I do. I know that more than I know just about anything. Especially after twenty fucking years. Twenty…years. The first five years (a struggle, but we made it), then the New York period (a struggle, but we made it), then the return (a struggle, but we made it), then the home (success), the son (success), the marriage (to be determined).

Brian sucks his lips into his mouth and bites down. I both love and hate when he does that, because I can never tell what’s coming next.

“So this is just our…’fuck you,’” Brian says, sliding his arms around my neck. “Big homo celebration to piss off the conservatives, to appease the lesbians and lesbian-wannabes and…Max.” He laughs. “’Cause we don’t need this shit. We know.”

I smile. “We do.”

“We go out there, say some shit, make out, party, and…fucking Ibiza. Think of Ibiza.”

“And Max.”

Brian presses his forehead to mine. “Still bugging you?”

“Seven…days.” I exhale loudly. “You know it bugs you, too.”

“I can’t properly fuck you with a kid in the room.”

“I know.”

Brian pulls me closer and kisses my nose.

“I love you,” I say in the space between our faces. “I’ll just go ahead and say it now before I publicly proclaim it…to Todd and the world.”

“What an unfortunate task that’s going to be.” Brian kisses my mouth so fucking softly, like a first kiss or something, slow and sweet. “I guess I might as well do the same.” Another kiss. “I am so…fucking…crazy…in…over my head.”

He laughs, so I shove him, but not too hard ‘cause I want him as close to me as possible. Goddamn Brian.

He grabs the sleeves of my jacket and pulls me in. “I love you.”

I smile up at him. “Good. You better.”

~*~

Brian and I wrote our own vows late one night when we were half-drunk, eating Chinese food, and in that stupid laughing-fit mood where we do a whole lot of kissing for no reason, shoving each other, and rolling around on the floor.

I have to admit that aloud, in front of a hundred people…they’re not as funny as they were that night. But, honestly, who really cares? They’re still way truer than the traditional honor and obey shit that there’s no fucking way either of us is going to say.

Basically, we declare to each other that we’re probably going to fuck up, we’re probably going to piss each other off, but when that happens, we move on. Together. And there’s a whole lot about how I promise to always wear socks in bed if my feet are cold, Brian will load and unload the dishwasher even if it offends his sensibilities, and…you know, I think you just have to be half-drunk and giggly in order to not think the vows are super lame. We really should have proofread them sober, because we sound like twenty-year-olds who’re trying to be cute, and that’s just not good.

Max does a spectacular job as ring bearer, even if he does get distracted by Emmett halfway down the aisle and stands idle beside him for like, two minutes, while everyone’s laughing and encouraging him to keep going. He’s proud of himself, anyway, and that’s all that matters. Brian ends up picking him up near the end of the ceremony, only putting him down when it’s time for us to make out. Which we do. Comically, sloppily. Brian forces my jaw open and practically licks my tonsils.

We’re all over each other until Gus threatens to leave and Debbie walks up from her spot on the platform and smacks us with her flowers.

And it’s funny being at the party, changed into our club clothes, dancing and kissing and watching Emmett teach Max how to shake his ass… It’s funny knowing that we’re married. How weird is that?

It’s funny how, honestly, the wedding wasn’t so bad. In fact, I’m kind of glad it happened, if only so that Brian and I could have had that little talk we had as we were getting dressed.

“We know,” he’d said.

Jesus Christ, that man. I pull his head down and kiss him…bite his bottom lip.

We so fucking do.

~*~

Gus comes up me when Brian’s off slow dancing with Lindsay and Max is slow dancing with Molly. He’s carrying four-month-old Sophie, who’s wearing this poofy pink baby dress that gives me hives, and he shifts her over to one arm in order to hug me from the side.

“When’s our flight?” He asks, taking a step back.

I look at him and smile even though I’m confused, because it’s funny how he grew up to look so much like Brian.

“What?” I ask.

“Our flight. Ibiza.”

I raise an eyebrow. No idea.

“Dad didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Yeah, so that’s how I found out. Once again: Goddamn Brian. He booked an additional two seats on the plane last-minute, got another hotel room, and boom, Gus and Max are hitching a ride on our honeymoon.

“We’re on different floors,” Brian tells me later, grabbing onto my hips as we dance. “Slightly different itineraries. Gus takes care of Max at night and while we’re fucking, the four of us have dinner together three nights of the seven…” He shrugs.

I shove him…still, not too far. He leans forward and kisses me.

“I think I shaved off a couple years of my life worrying about the whole honeymoon ordeal,” I tell him, not-so-reluctantly wrapping my arms around his waist. “Thanks.”

Brian jabs his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “I just like surprising you.”

“I hate you.”

“Not what you said earlier.”

I squeeze him tight and just shake my head. Shake my fucking head. “You’re infuriating.”

“You’re easy.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”


End file.
